Tag: Censorship

Nightline 1985, Part 1

2013-03-30, 8:50 pm
Categories: Music, Politics, TV

Koppel interviews Zappa, Donny Osmond, and Kandy Stroud regarding -- what else? -- the Porn Wars. Uploaded by koolstrike.

Kudos in particular to Nightline for pointing out that Love for Sale was once banned from radio and Louie, Louie was investigated by the FBI for having allegedly obscene lyrics. The pro-censorship crowd argues, as always, "Well yes that was silly, but this time is completely different!" Much like people advocating video game censorship today.

Zappa also meets a potentially-unexpected ally in Donny Osmond, who is opposed to the music rating system on the simple grounds that R-rated movies make more money than G-rated ones and music ratings would be a threat to the sales of Osmond's squeaky-clean music.

Nite Life, Part 1

2013-03-08, 9:23 pm
Categories: Music, Politics, TV

Nite Life, David Brenner's talk show, 1986.

The reference to the Crusades is interesting -- there's an old Simpsons where Roger Myers Sr., defending Itchy & Scratchy and cartoon violence, points out that the Crusades happened before animation was even invented. Knowing what a Zappa fan Groening is, I wonder if he picked up that comparison here.

Snyder's Batman

2013-02-13, 9:23 pm
Categories: Comics, Stream of Consciousness

I'm increasingly of the opinion that Scott Snyder has some great ideas about Batman but his stuff's just not for me. That one-off issue with Becky Cloonan on art was the best Batman story I've read all year, but Death of the Family was some good ideas wrapped around a needlessly violent and decompressed story. (My favorite part: you can show people dancing until their feet bleed, you can show a tapestry made of sewn-together still-living people -- but if you want to say "ass", you'd better use comic-book symbols to bleep it out.) I think both the setup and the resolution were solid. I just think there was too much dithering in-between. Even without the half-dozen tie-in books.

Gail Simone recently responded to a reader who was put off by the grimness of Death of the Family by saying, "The bat-verse in general IS in a pretty dark place right now, but I do believe some lighter stories are coming." Here's hoping. Snyder's already done some great work -- but great work where Batman smiles now and again would be more to my tastes.

Crossfire 1989

2013-02-01, 10:38 pm
Categories: Politics, TV

It's not the epic, classic performance of his 1986 "Fascist Theocracy" interview, but it's a pretty damn great conversation nonetheless: the government shouldn't get to decide what is and isn't art and determine funding based on politicians' personal tastes, and at any rate it's a pretty ridiculous sideshow given what an insignificant portion of the budget funding for the arts actually is.

Nightwatch

2013-01-31, 11:41 pm
Categories: Cartoons, Music, Politics, TV

Another upload by tomtiddler1: Halloween '83, with Moon and Dweezil along. Amazing how much her vocabulary and inflection mirror her dad's, and it's nice to watch them all together -- here's a family that likes being around each other. And while there are the usual interview bits where Frank starts to roll his eyes, they really seem to bring out the kid in him, too.

CBCtv, 1969

2013-01-23, 11:08 pm
Categories: Music, Politics, TV

Coulda sworn I'd already posted this one but I can't find it looking through the archives, so here it is. Zappa on Canadian TV, talking about the absurdity of TV.

The Last Post

2013-01-18, 11:29 pm
Categories: Music, Politics, TV

Just in case you're concerned by that title: no, I'm not doing something drastic and shutting down the blog; The Last Post is the title of the article I'm linking, via afka.net. The interview was conducted in July of 1991, but wasn't published until 2004, in Mojo.

Frank hits a few of his usual topics -- business, mostly, with a little talk about his work on the Synclavier, and politics at home and abroad. In discussing the Czech Republic's first steps into capitalism, he advocates for government funding for the arts. It's always interesting reading Zappa's thoughts on economics; he was pretty fiscally conservative but certainly didn't buy into the Republican/Libertarian notion that the government is no damn good for anything and everything should be left up to the private sector.